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Wanna Play a Game?
New-computer is fixed, but I haven't done the switching out yet - it's going to be a whole thing, because new-computer is a big brute of a thing that 1) I can barely move and 2) does not fit into my desk's computer-well, so wiring it up gets complicated. Instead of wrestling with it, I am on old-computer, going through files I forgot I had. And it turns out I have a whole folder called "Fic Quotes"! But all of two quotes were attributed. So I'm sharing quotes, but mostly I am asking someone, anyone, to Name That Fic. Please? Also, cutting because the Joli Coeur quote is plot-spoilery, but also something I love VISCERALLY, so.
"More," Justin moans again, and arches his back, thrusting his ass towards JC. There's a little slut in him, JC realizes dreamily, but that's not an insult. There are, he figures, only two kinds of people: people with slut in them and people who don't have slut in them. It doesn't have anything to do with promiscuity or sexual preference or sexual satisfaction.
Justin moves his hips like he was trained from the cradle, and he's maing sex noises already and begging for more, so. Little bit of slut. No worse than JC has in himself.
- Determined Southern Boys, by Gale
He hummed as he towelled off, sneaking looks at Zelenka, still rinsing his hair, wondering vaguely if he should care that he was feeling all the symptoms of a sudden release of phenylethylamine. He recognised the rampant body chemistry that meant he was falling in love like a ton of bricks, and it should have scared the shit out of him, but he was too gleeful to care. Sex! Physics! Zelenka! Sex! It was all good. Still humming, he found the latest notebook and picked up where he'd left off.
He caught Zelenka looking speculatively at him, a few hours later. There was something so fey in the look, Rodney's heart skipped a beat and then went into double time.
"What?" he demanded. "What, what?"
"I suspect that too much sex and chocolate and scientific breakthrough has filled my bloodstream with phenylethylamine," Zelenka said, sounding a little put out.
Rodney's heart rate, if anything, tripled. "Oh, good, me too," he said hurriedly, and kissed him desperately.
- Absurdity Theory
"I'm just saying I don't see how you can blame me for fucking Jack senseless," Daniel argued. "The aliens made me do it."
"No way," Jack protested.
"The aliens didn't make you do it?" Hammond asked.
"No...wh--huh?" Jack said.
"Senseless," Daniel repeated, gesturing at Jack as his proof.
"Not senseless," Jack said quickly.
"Oh, please," Sam said disdainfully. "It was ten minutes before you could remember your own name. Twenty before you could actually say it."
"Was not," Jack said, sitting up and throwing his chest out.
"You found god," Daniel said smugly.
"Thor had nothing to do with it."
- Debriefing: Aliens Made Me Do It by Eos
What John really wants to tell Rodney is that this, too, shall pass. That he's seen worse and that he will see worse and that after he left college and joined the bureau and saw the real world he learned that the universe was not the elegant symphony of numbers and jarring theory, moving in different time signatures, relativity and spacetime and shimmering, vibrating strings teasing out a wail as beautiful as that of a single, solo violin. John's heard the way that tremulous atoms turn into molecules which build into screams and crescendos and blood on John's hands.
John wants to say, don't worry--my heart's been broken all this time, and I've been fine.
- Hindsight, by Pru
There's a hardness to Simon. Not like Jayne, who wears everything on the outside. The others -- Mal and Zoe and Wash -- they think her brother is brittle. Foolish. Simon is like Persephone bone china. It looks like the most fragile, delicate porcelain ever made, but you can't break it with a sledgehammer.
- In the Before, by Kirby Crow
...Xander suspected that Kendra had something of a crush on Giles, of all people. He had the feeling that her own Watcher was far less the, "Oh I'm very British and Proper but watch out because I could flip out and go all Ripper on this whole place if you're not careful."
- Not actually sure! But probably I Am What I Am, by M. Mcgregor
"Here's the Fun with Dick and Jane version: See Giles. See Giles work big black magic. See vampires hear about it. See Giles with an old vampire claim. See vampires drool over Giles' old vampire claim. See Giles become some vampire's meat. Getting it yet?"
- The Key's Watcher (Dark Haven): Hunter's Moon, by Tara Keezer
Xander was having a dream that he was being chased by something large and loud, but in the dark of the hotel he couldn't see what it was. It was right behind him, though, practically breathing down his neck. And although he was running through the empty hallways as fast as he could, it was gaining on him. There were two problems with the situation: one was that Xander knew he was dreaming, but was unable to make himself wake up. The second was that Dream Xander knew exactly what was behind him, but refused to let his conscious mind in on the information. Dream Xander preferred to be smug.
- http://www.angelfire.com/md2/hazelfic/fic/cause2.html
"We have a name for men like you," Zobral said, indecently sucking on a piece of chocolate.
"Is it a nice name?" John hoped as he watched Zobral lick one of his fingers.
"Kolika, "Zobral said. "It means pretty man whore."
- unknown
“Okay, okay. Bonding moment. Heart to heart. Deep dark childhood secrets…let’s see.” Brightening, he sat up a little. “Oh, hey, I slept with a nightlight until I was fifteen. How about that? Is that good?”
“Actually that, Rodney, would be more in the category of things you tell no one…ever. Secrets of the grave I think they’re called. Fifteen?” Albert and I gave him looks of mixed sympathy and derision. “That’s…well…pathetic about covers it.”
He scowled instantly. “It’s not my fault. It was my sister Jeannie. She wanted to be a doctor. She kept trying to cut me up in the middle of the night when I was asleep. Forgive me if it made me a little twitchy. I woke up one morning with a dotted line in red marker down the middle of my chest. She said she was ready for a go at open heart surgery. A nightlight was all I had. If I’d had a machete I would’ve slept with that under my pillow.”
- unknown
Deaq felt like he was drowning. Never had the reality of who was in control ever been more clear.
Van had given himself to Deaq with a staggering completeness. He was car keys in Deaq's pocket, a pair of old shoes in the closet. Property. Body and soul owned by Deaqon Hayes. And yet Deaq was the keys. The shoes. Deaq was the one owned.
- Vision in Green
“Rodney? Ah…yes, he would, but to look on bright side.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and I had the feeling was wishing for two or maybe even ten Tylenol. “Very probably gate will never work again. He will not be able to reach us and your ass will remain unprejudiced.” With a glum expression, he reached for a powerbar and took a bite. “We will live out our lives here in this hideous place. They will be no doubt short and brutal, marked by disease and violence. With no other humans, there will be no females and so we will be forced into desperate actions of men with needs…needs so strong that….” That was about the time I happened to oh-so-casually chamber a round in my nine mil, and he grinned to himself, undaunted. “Or I could fix gate and we go home one maybe two days.”
I fixed eyes, bright with suspicion, on him. “You’re lying like a dog, aren’t you, Dr. Z? You have a habit of that.”
He shrugged and took another bite as lightning continued to flare, purple and fierce. “Unvarnished truth is greatly overrated, I’m thinking.”
- The Geeks & Goons series, by Koschka
Dinah knows what Barbara sees when she looks at her. She knows that the part of Barbara that's Oracle sees a favored operative, with potential to be even better than she is. She knows that the rest of her sees an occasionally difficult but much-appreciated friend with appalling taste in men and nowhere near enough ambition.
The knowledge is hard won -- Barbara is, at base, a Bat. Which means that getting relationship-related information out of her is the equivalent of trying to pull teeth with seven broken fingers and a case of the shakes. Possibly the DTs.
- Make it rhyme, by Te
"We'll take this one," he said to the salesgirl hovering a few yards away, looking like she had been seriously contemplating her mortality in the last half an hour. Vetinari tended to have that effect on people. Death, on the other hand, merely struck them as someone very tall, very thin, and very polite. The black robes didn't even register.
Vetinari enjoyed the irony.
- Curtain Call
So here I fucking am, Azrael the pissed-off, a demon with a golf club stuck in my chest and a grudge against everyone on earth and above except the artists. Even the ones who stayed unpublished their whole lives rather than give up a teensy sliver of soul, I love even them. Because artists get it. They may think they're nothing like me, they might do shit like kill themselves out of guilt for taking a photo of a starving kid and a vulture just to prove that they're not distant, but it doesn't change the fact that they get it.
A few years back I was in a movie theatre watching some piece of shit about a boat sinking and some kids who liked to paint each other naked or something. And this little old lady said to her husband as we all left the theatre 'It's sad all those people died, but didn't it make a lovely film?' and I wanted to kiss the shrivelled old bat because that's my whole fucking point. Your blood is just oil on the wheels of my art, folks.
I chose a side in heaven when the war began. My fucking side, the art side, which is more than just good or evil. It wasn't cowardice.
If I keep telling myself this shit, I'm sure I'll eventually believe it. I'm pretty persuasive, after all.
- Muse
Faith never kisses them, never even touches them. But she has to get off somehow and she can't seem to do that for herself.
She never really could before, either, and that's what the boys were for, with their bodies for fucking and their minds for fucking and their hearts for eating. Nighttime toys and it was thinking of the look on their faces in the morning that made her come.
Now it's even harder, with the women and the fluorescent lights. The women are afraid of her, but they don't want her, they don't need her. She doesn't know their minds and they have no hearts to eat.
- 5x500
...Hyde said, sitting down behind the minister, who was staring at Kelso as though he had horns. "What's the problem, man?"
Kelso smiled. "No problem, man!" he said. "Father Bob here is just having a hard time accepting my vows to Fez."
"Quoting Ben Affleck's gay wedding speech is not a vow, Michael!" Fez snapped, smacking him on the shoulder.
"But it's beautiful, man," Kelso said, looking down at a pad of paper. "Your love has opened up so many parts of my heart that I did not know existed...especially the queer parts. There are so many things that you are wicked good at..."
"Oh, you lovable galoot," said Fez, shaking his head. "But no. Those vows are for Ben and Matt and their pure, true love alone. Good day to them!"
"But Fez..." Kelso said, looking up at his groom-to-be with beseeching, pretty eyes.
"I said good day!" Fez said. "Now kiss me, you beautiful thing, and let's try again."
- Thirteen Conversations About Teh Gay, by Jennifer-Oksana
Angel drunk? I must brood now. No, I'm plastered, so instead I'll do the Macarena. But I'm still Angel. So I must brood. Macarena. Brood. Macarena. Wait, is that a Ricky Martin song?
- Chocolatey Goodness, by the Mad Poetess
You killed a spider-plant, Xander. Do you know how hard it is to kill a spider-plant? Yes, Willow. I fought very hard, and at last succeeded. It died a valiant death.
- Chocolatey Goodness, by the Mad Poetess
"It hurts him, though. My boy doesn't like to be hurt, not really. Not like me." Drusilla spoke softly, her eyes clouded as she watched Spike whisper something unintelligible under his breath. "He likes to play games, and he likes to be punished, sometimes, but it's not the same." Her voice turned conspiratorial for a moment. "It's because of Daddy. The King of Clubs made the princess, you see, but her knight was made by the King of Hearts, who fed him chocolate toffees and spanked him when he was good."
- Chocolatey Goodness, by the Mad Poetess
There was quite a simple explanation for everything, Harry decided. The dream, the- whatever that was, in the shower.
He had gone insane.
Which was sad, really, because the sanity had served him quite well over the years. But there really wasn't any other explanation for what had happened. He'd closed his eyes, and then he wasn't in control anymore. Some evil force had taken over his mind, like a voice in his head, only with pictures and a taste for the obscene. Harry found that comforting. At least it wasn't his fault.
- Take It and Like It, by Sara
Quietly they bleed into each other, moonlight broken into a thousand shards. Touching and tasting, skin pressed against skin.
He holds these memories to himself: her dead eyes, her dark kiss.
Wishing he dared to take more of her in.
- Quiet as She Bleeds, by Spyke
You say, "Well, try. I'll wait," and you don't know you mean it. You mean forever before you're old enough to understand what that means, and by then it's too late.
- Esperanza, by Silvia Kundera
You've seen her caged and you don't like it. Boxes and boys, they keep working to fold her up and away.
- Esperanza, by Silvia Kundera
Because he was never the right hand of Death, no matter what the Watchers might say now. Angelus and Death never had much in common. Death doesn't do what He does for the power-trip or the artistic finesse. No, it's all about setting up the toy soldiers and watching them fall. Death is chaos and devil-may-care, Death is the Butterfly Effect: a butterfly flaps its wings in Peking and suddenly California gets a tidal wave instead of the predicted sunny skies and a hundred people drown and Death sits back, eternal child that he is, and claps his hands in glee. Death smirks and smokes and laughs and tastes like the smoothest whiskey, and that's Spike. Angelus went into churches to destroy the innocent; Spike went into them to see if he could outsmart the priests, armed with their holy water and crucifixes, and emerge victorious. Because it was *fun.* The Grim Reaper has bright blue eyes and looks good in leather; the Grim Reaper makes sure that you want to fuck him before you go.
- Blood Loss, by Jess
You say, one day, "Did you know I've always loved your hands?" and the boy looks at you like you're crazy, and you want to explain about how you're a hero and this is first of your last stanzas of song, where you lay waste to a kingdom for a beautiful woman - except you don't like women too much, so it will have to be a man.
- Legend, by Silvia Kundera
Being with him tore me up, but it was like breathing after being choked, and it was the best thing in my life. Ever.
- A Long Time, by the Mad Poetess
Eeyore could not come, and that was Too Bad, because he was a gloomy old thing, and could have used some cheering up. But the nice Man In A White Coat had said that he simply could not go out alone while he was under a Suicide Watch.
- Teddybear's Picnic, by Scribe
"Why do you do this to me?"
"Because it gets you off," Draco said, lifting his arms so Harry could remove his shirt. He gasped as Harry bent down, licking roughly at his nipple. "And me, also. It's like this vicious, wonderful cycle."
- Darken Many Virtues, by Sara
It’s not the sweeping, dewy-eyed love of romance novels and bad TV movies; we are too much ourselves for that. There are still mornings when I wake up surprised to see him there, and I know that he has just as many flashes of panic that the whole thing is going to fall down around us as I do. We’ve seen too much to want the fairy tale ending. We would probably fight over who gets to be the prince and who the horse, and to be honest we know that most fairy tales end in someone getting something cut off with medieval weaponry and hey, been there, wearin' the eye-patch.
Sometimes I imagine some bored god flipping us like coins. Heads for hate, tails for love, and a part of me will always be waiting for the next flip. But until then I’m here and its not just for the company. It is big heart slamming, I can’t get enough of him, ticking bomb clock love. I love him more than I could ever have dreamt of hating him and I know by every glance that he feels the same.
He’s still Spike, though; the sacrificial goat act didn’t change him where it matters. He’s no angel, which considering the thudding punnage is a good thing. There are differences. Yeah, sometimes it’s like living with a cross between a Ritalin deprived toddler and Buddha and, okay I love him, but he is far from perfect. He can be murderously annoying, he hogs the covers and picks his teeth with left over animal bones, he constantly messes with the radio, and for all his I’m-so-cool-now-that-I-have-become-some-weird-vamp-resurrected-fire-element-guy he giggled like a kid for a day after we saw some giraffes mating. He dips Twinkies in blood and knows all the words to Bohemian Rhapsody. He refuses to wear anything other than that sarong and true, he looks strange in anything else these days, but it doesn’t help me not look like a white slaver when I’m trying to get a young girl papers out of the country. He found some weird herb and threw it on the fire in Morocco and I still have very disjointed memories of dancing girls, a basket of chickens and a gong. He sneers at my language attempts, curses every time I touch a map and laughs at my various beard experiments. If we have a fight he has the crazy-making habit of disappearing just as I have the perfect put down, and God, I can’t tell you about the sulking…but he makes me laugh every single day and he looks at me like I’m the only person he can see or wants to. He makes me happy and with him I know I’m loved for me, I don’t have to change or achieve, he will go with me no matter what way I step.
- Dictaphonic Rambling, by littleflame
All Brad wants is a nice cold beer after a real hard day. There was a time when he enjoyed law and didn't get the headaches -- when he went home excited and went to bed happy, not worn out and half-dreading the morning to come. It doesn't mean he's lost the spark. He's just gotten older. This sort of disillusionment is to be expected with age. Besides, you hear Denny Crane enough times in one day and you start to wonder if you haven't maybe gone insane.
- Manful
There is a long, silent pause. Brad wants to be dead. It's like that dream you have, where you're naked in front of all your classmates in the eighth grade. The meanest grade of all.
- Manful
...because, when you get down to it, he's always been a fool for love.
It was love for Buffy that made him go to Angel and shame him into going into the Master's lair after her; love for her, and for the Scoobies and Giles, and even his family and his stupid little town, that made him keep going into the lairs of other villains, patrol the cemeteries and back alleys and beaches of Sunnydale with the Junior Justice League. Once Cordelia had gone to Los Angeles, Xander had been the only average human amongst the Slayer-Watcher-Witch-Demon crowd. Poor old Riley couldn't stand being average, and Xander could bet anything that Riley was shooting his way through Cadmeon's Demonlogy in an effort to make himself feel super-human.
Wasn't how it works, Xander could have told him. You do it for love of your gang, your guys, your Band of Brothers---or, sisters as in Xander's case. Not because you want to tell yourself that your individuality and your specialness is what made you leave Iowa. You shove stakes in your waistband and holy water bottles in your pockets and go forth and fight evil, not for the fame and fortune or even your mother's smiles, but because of the smell of crayons in your hot hand, the way you felt when you made a whole class and teacher laugh at your joke, because your mom had once bought you a guitar you couldn't play, because you had never ever felt six feet tall and bullet-proof, but because your friends couldn't save the world without you and there was something about Buffy's wide, wide smile that told you that.
You do it for love of that world, of even the asshole undeads, of even the loud bickering parents and the drunken uncles, of the ex- girlfriends who came back to your side, of the nice lady at the Espresso Pump who always gave you refills, of the classmates who you mourned and had to dust. The little girls who squared their jaws and picked up stakes, and followed you and your friends into a hellmouth, when they could have turned and run.
- A Free Man in Rome
She was pretty. Maybe pretty like poisonous flowers and vampire women were pretty, but Xander had Lilah and his plan-free brain between himself and zombification, so he was going to bet on the brunette with the naughty sparkle in her eyes.
"What do we do?" Xander asked.
"First, we have lots of noisy sex," Lilah said, unbuttoning her blouse nonchalantly. "Nothing gods and demons -- and hey, everyone else -- love more than kinky undead-living sex. Then we do what I should have done before walking into the Redding Chainsaw Massacre."
- Lilah and Xander vs. The Zombie Gods of Redding
"...Rest assured nothing as syrupy as Love is going to stop me."
Xander growled in rage before answering.
"There are some cosmic truths a comic geek and amateur houngan like me understands that you never will. Maybe you should have tried to fit some time in your busy zombie-queen schedule to read some Neil Gaiman back when you were alive, Dominga. 'Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain.'"
Tears of fury were now running down Xander's face and his eye was blacker than it had ever been, burning with pure passionate hatred. With each cutting word his hoarse voice became more vicious.
"You think Love belongs solely in the light? You think it's all just sweetness and roses? You've been watching too many Valentine's day commercials. Love is raw and it hurts and it kills you a day at a time. Love is fury so blind a witch will rip out a man's skin and set him on fire. It's watching the only man who ever saw you as more than just another fuck-up die in front of you and being able to do -nothing-, not even cry or scream because if you did, you're not sure you'd ever stop. You think you dedicating this place to darkness will keep Love out, you stupid dead hag? Watch and learn!"
Xander threw his head back with a mad cruel smile and roared.
"ERZULIE-ZILA! ZIEUROUGE! HEAR ME CRUEL MOTHER OF VENGEANCE! HEAR ME DESOLATE QUEEN OF SHATTERED HEARTS! YOUR WICKED LOVING CHILD CALLS UPON YOU, DEVOURING MOTHER!"
Dominga hissed at hearing the much-feared name and then smiled nastily.
"How dramatic. Unfortunately for you, the red loas will not answer without a sacrifice of human blood, you idiot. Who are you willing to kill to call ..."
Dominga's words died on Belinda's lips, watching in shock.
As Xander slit his own throat with his knife, his eye burned crimson and he never stopped smiling.
- Joli Coeur, by Caramel Covered Carioca
Their MALP wasn't a MALP so much as it was a little UAV, built for flight in and out of atmosphere and with an anti-gravity component as secret sauce. Rodney had cobbled together the anti-gravity and propulsion thing from the remains of a discarded child's toy (also, he'd whooped like an idiot and done a strangely compelling little dance when he'd figured out exactly what it was he'd found in the junk pile), and John had built the body of the not-quite-plane from what he was convinced had once been a toaster. Their MALP didn't really have wings as such, just a few short fins to help keep it stable in atmosphere, but it was shaped a bit like a bicycle helmet and about the size of a Labrador. The little electric grappler that Rodney had attached to the back ("So teams can retrieve it with a Puddlejumper, even when it's in space; it'll snare the Jumper's hull like a magnet and hitch a ride home!") had taken on all the appearance of a tail, and made the robot look a bit like a family pet.
John loved it, and had secretly named it "The Flying Toaster of Doom," but he hadn't told Rodney that yet. He was planning to give it a custom paint job while Rodney wasn't looking.
- Such Is the Way to the Stars
"None of you are supposed to be in here! This door was shut! Why are you down here anyway? Where are your parents?"
It has to be, of course, the tiniest and most elfin-faced child who speaks up. Doe eyes unblinking, a squeaky voice announces, solemnly, "My parents are dead. The Wraith took them."
Oh, God. McKay shuts his eyes, feeling the guilt rising like a blush. A pity for the kids, really, because they're just too young to resist that stricken look on his face. A second voice says, "Ooh - and mine!" and a third "Mine too. And my sister." "And my uncle!" "And my - stoat..."
McKay opens his eyes. Two of the kids are furiously poking a third, presumably the one who thought it was smart playing the stoat sympathy card.
- unknown
"Wonderful. My choice of Vivaldi or Brazilian techno, and if I do not listen to music while I work than I have to listen to Gorsen's muttering. Talk, talk, talk while he works."
"I'd share my music, except, wait, you wiped all my mp3s off my laptop," Rodney said.
Zelenka looked exasperated. "Yes, I am most terribly sorry. If we had had to flee the Wraith, I am sure we would have been consoled in our exile by collected works of They Might Be Giants." He held up one hand in the air and said, "Remnants of Ancient database." He held up the other hand as if weighing scales. "Particle Man. Such a dilemma it was."
- unknown
The problem with teaching someone with a deeply vindictive personality Occlumency was the inevitable problem of his using it to evil ends.
Combining the fact that Snape had a deep and dreadful loathing of the Marauders, James' recent revelation that he was a jolly homophobe and Sirius' recent revelation that he was mad over Remus (made simultaneously by Peter, who was then thoroughly thumped by all involved), nothing good could have possibly come of it.
The fact that Snape had a very deep, dark, secretive penchant for reading terrible Wizarding romance novels did nothing to improve the situation.
- Cliche #5, by Pru
Remus batted his lashes at him, and murmured, "Oh, James, I'm sorry. I should have known you'd want to be the aggressor." He flung himself dramatically across James' bed, throwing one white forearm across his face in exaggerated meekness, and somehow blushed on cue, saying in a tremulous voice, "Do what you will with me."
Peter whimpered from across the room. "Oh, James. Sirius is going to kill you so much."
- Cliche #5, by Pru
One reason Rodney's attention was worth something was because it was rare. Rodney gave attention to problems, and to devices, and to food and coffee, and to worst-case scenarios. People, not so much. He made you earn it.
Which made the rare occasions when he said, "Hey, that might work," really rewarding.
John wasn't going to think about the even rarer occasions when Rodney said, "Yes, yes, exactly," because sometimes he heard that in the shower while he jerked off, and so it had come to have a Pavlovian effect.
- unknown
"You could leave me. Or die tomorrow. I don't know how I could go back to the way things were before. Maybe I couldn't. That should scare the shit out of me."
"I'm not going to die tomorrow."
"You can't promise that."
John shifted under him, sighing. "No, I can't. I can't promise. But, really, it's not likely, is it? I'm not sick. You'd know. One of the fringe benefits of being a guide; cancer or high blood pressure or something can't sneak up on you."
"Freak accident," Rodney said. "A meteor could drop on you tomorrow. Squish."
"Right? And who will be standing right next to me when it hits? If I die tomorrow in a freak accident, one in a million chance, lightening strike, who could have guessed--you will probably not have to worry about outliving me, Rodney. To be really blunt."
Rodney laughed despite himself. But part of what he was laughing at was his own profound and unexpected betrayal. "Oh, my god. I can't protect myself from you at all. I trust you. I'd let you do anything. I don't even mind the meteor idea. I've lost my mind."
- Imperfections: John and Rodney
These days, the rumours speak of Jack out-waiting Old Roger himself, and Jack thinks it's all bloody marvelous. The rum will loosen the lad's tongue, and Jack will get his prize before the night is out, or his name isn't Captain Jack Sparrow. (Strictly speaking, it isn't, but Jack fully intends for his given name to be lost in the annals of time, if by 'lost' one means 'all traces erased and utterly destroyed, never ever to be seen again by eyes human or otherwise, and perhaps stomped on with a sturdy boot for good measure.')
- Hurricane Jack
“I want to know why zombies,” said Jon. “I mean. Does this kind of thing just happen? The bus wanders off into the darkness and then zombies eat us? I feel like I would have seen that on the news.”
“Unless it just happened,” said Spencer. “Maybe this is the start of the zombie apocalypse.”
“Or maybe,” Brendon moaned, “this is the end, and we’re the last living people on earth.”
“No, Pete would have called,” Ryan reassured him.
“Or texted,” said Spencer. “’SRY G2G, ZMBIE 8 PATRICK.’ Something.”
- It's almost Halloween
"Lex Luthor?" said a disbelieving voice. Lex looked into the lens of an iconograph.
"If you set that thing on me, Otto, I will have your guts for garters," said Lex.
Otto lowered the iconograph hastily.
"Zat hasn't been done since your grandfather's day," he said.
"Well, I don't look anything like him," said Lex. "So I must have taken after him in some other way."
He smiled, his fangs glinting.
- Disclexia; or, Clex-in-Discworld
It might have been the most important kiss of his life: happening now, this moment, his head was changing, he needed this kiss, he liked men, he loved his mouth on Spike and Spike's mouth on his, and he understood that everything in him could surrender, the heart of darkness softening, and he might die, like crucifixion, but not with dishonesty or cruelty or hate. He'd die of love. He was okay with that.
When Xander's lungs were fuller than they'd ever been--he wanted to breathe and make a sailboat glide--Spike licked himself loose. He seemed rightfully smug, but as Xander gazed into his eyes and smiled happily, his face shifted a moment to wonderment, as if something unexpected had happened.
- Your Horoscope For Today
The look of solid, protective determination that flashes across Fairchild's face lets Bruno know that this will never happen, that Fairchild will fight and fight viciously. It's not acceptance or even empathy, but it's a visceral sort of affection, and so much of Bruno's life has hinged upon that instinctive desire to love that stirs in every heart--in his mother's, his father's, his little sister's as she smoothed his hair and figured him out. There have always been shipwrecks and rocky shoals, and the blind, voracious desire to love the people you love has saved him every time, floated him toward safety.
- On the Road
He wants to say something about how he's in love with Boots, and what makes Boots happy will ultimately make Bruno happy, even if he finds it at the bottom of a bottle six years later--even then, it's acceptable joy.
- On the Road
"More," Justin moans again, and arches his back, thrusting his ass towards JC. There's a little slut in him, JC realizes dreamily, but that's not an insult. There are, he figures, only two kinds of people: people with slut in them and people who don't have slut in them. It doesn't have anything to do with promiscuity or sexual preference or sexual satisfaction.
Justin moves his hips like he was trained from the cradle, and he's maing sex noises already and begging for more, so. Little bit of slut. No worse than JC has in himself.
- Determined Southern Boys, by Gale
He hummed as he towelled off, sneaking looks at Zelenka, still rinsing his hair, wondering vaguely if he should care that he was feeling all the symptoms of a sudden release of phenylethylamine. He recognised the rampant body chemistry that meant he was falling in love like a ton of bricks, and it should have scared the shit out of him, but he was too gleeful to care. Sex! Physics! Zelenka! Sex! It was all good. Still humming, he found the latest notebook and picked up where he'd left off.
He caught Zelenka looking speculatively at him, a few hours later. There was something so fey in the look, Rodney's heart skipped a beat and then went into double time.
"What?" he demanded. "What, what?"
"I suspect that too much sex and chocolate and scientific breakthrough has filled my bloodstream with phenylethylamine," Zelenka said, sounding a little put out.
Rodney's heart rate, if anything, tripled. "Oh, good, me too," he said hurriedly, and kissed him desperately.
- Absurdity Theory
"I'm just saying I don't see how you can blame me for fucking Jack senseless," Daniel argued. "The aliens made me do it."
"No way," Jack protested.
"The aliens didn't make you do it?" Hammond asked.
"No...wh--huh?" Jack said.
"Senseless," Daniel repeated, gesturing at Jack as his proof.
"Not senseless," Jack said quickly.
"Oh, please," Sam said disdainfully. "It was ten minutes before you could remember your own name. Twenty before you could actually say it."
"Was not," Jack said, sitting up and throwing his chest out.
"You found god," Daniel said smugly.
"Thor had nothing to do with it."
- Debriefing: Aliens Made Me Do It by Eos
What John really wants to tell Rodney is that this, too, shall pass. That he's seen worse and that he will see worse and that after he left college and joined the bureau and saw the real world he learned that the universe was not the elegant symphony of numbers and jarring theory, moving in different time signatures, relativity and spacetime and shimmering, vibrating strings teasing out a wail as beautiful as that of a single, solo violin. John's heard the way that tremulous atoms turn into molecules which build into screams and crescendos and blood on John's hands.
John wants to say, don't worry--my heart's been broken all this time, and I've been fine.
- Hindsight, by Pru
There's a hardness to Simon. Not like Jayne, who wears everything on the outside. The others -- Mal and Zoe and Wash -- they think her brother is brittle. Foolish. Simon is like Persephone bone china. It looks like the most fragile, delicate porcelain ever made, but you can't break it with a sledgehammer.
- In the Before, by Kirby Crow
...Xander suspected that Kendra had something of a crush on Giles, of all people. He had the feeling that her own Watcher was far less the, "Oh I'm very British and Proper but watch out because I could flip out and go all Ripper on this whole place if you're not careful."
- Not actually sure! But probably I Am What I Am, by M. Mcgregor
"Here's the Fun with Dick and Jane version: See Giles. See Giles work big black magic. See vampires hear about it. See Giles with an old vampire claim. See vampires drool over Giles' old vampire claim. See Giles become some vampire's meat. Getting it yet?"
- The Key's Watcher (Dark Haven): Hunter's Moon, by Tara Keezer
Xander was having a dream that he was being chased by something large and loud, but in the dark of the hotel he couldn't see what it was. It was right behind him, though, practically breathing down his neck. And although he was running through the empty hallways as fast as he could, it was gaining on him. There were two problems with the situation: one was that Xander knew he was dreaming, but was unable to make himself wake up. The second was that Dream Xander knew exactly what was behind him, but refused to let his conscious mind in on the information. Dream Xander preferred to be smug.
- http://www.angelfire.com/md2/hazelfic/fic/cause2.html
"We have a name for men like you," Zobral said, indecently sucking on a piece of chocolate.
"Is it a nice name?" John hoped as he watched Zobral lick one of his fingers.
"Kolika, "Zobral said. "It means pretty man whore."
- unknown
“Okay, okay. Bonding moment. Heart to heart. Deep dark childhood secrets…let’s see.” Brightening, he sat up a little. “Oh, hey, I slept with a nightlight until I was fifteen. How about that? Is that good?”
“Actually that, Rodney, would be more in the category of things you tell no one…ever. Secrets of the grave I think they’re called. Fifteen?” Albert and I gave him looks of mixed sympathy and derision. “That’s…well…pathetic about covers it.”
He scowled instantly. “It’s not my fault. It was my sister Jeannie. She wanted to be a doctor. She kept trying to cut me up in the middle of the night when I was asleep. Forgive me if it made me a little twitchy. I woke up one morning with a dotted line in red marker down the middle of my chest. She said she was ready for a go at open heart surgery. A nightlight was all I had. If I’d had a machete I would’ve slept with that under my pillow.”
- unknown
Deaq felt like he was drowning. Never had the reality of who was in control ever been more clear.
Van had given himself to Deaq with a staggering completeness. He was car keys in Deaq's pocket, a pair of old shoes in the closet. Property. Body and soul owned by Deaqon Hayes. And yet Deaq was the keys. The shoes. Deaq was the one owned.
- Vision in Green
“Rodney? Ah…yes, he would, but to look on bright side.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and I had the feeling was wishing for two or maybe even ten Tylenol. “Very probably gate will never work again. He will not be able to reach us and your ass will remain unprejudiced.” With a glum expression, he reached for a powerbar and took a bite. “We will live out our lives here in this hideous place. They will be no doubt short and brutal, marked by disease and violence. With no other humans, there will be no females and so we will be forced into desperate actions of men with needs…needs so strong that….” That was about the time I happened to oh-so-casually chamber a round in my nine mil, and he grinned to himself, undaunted. “Or I could fix gate and we go home one maybe two days.”
I fixed eyes, bright with suspicion, on him. “You’re lying like a dog, aren’t you, Dr. Z? You have a habit of that.”
He shrugged and took another bite as lightning continued to flare, purple and fierce. “Unvarnished truth is greatly overrated, I’m thinking.”
- The Geeks & Goons series, by Koschka
Dinah knows what Barbara sees when she looks at her. She knows that the part of Barbara that's Oracle sees a favored operative, with potential to be even better than she is. She knows that the rest of her sees an occasionally difficult but much-appreciated friend with appalling taste in men and nowhere near enough ambition.
The knowledge is hard won -- Barbara is, at base, a Bat. Which means that getting relationship-related information out of her is the equivalent of trying to pull teeth with seven broken fingers and a case of the shakes. Possibly the DTs.
- Make it rhyme, by Te
"We'll take this one," he said to the salesgirl hovering a few yards away, looking like she had been seriously contemplating her mortality in the last half an hour. Vetinari tended to have that effect on people. Death, on the other hand, merely struck them as someone very tall, very thin, and very polite. The black robes didn't even register.
Vetinari enjoyed the irony.
- Curtain Call
So here I fucking am, Azrael the pissed-off, a demon with a golf club stuck in my chest and a grudge against everyone on earth and above except the artists. Even the ones who stayed unpublished their whole lives rather than give up a teensy sliver of soul, I love even them. Because artists get it. They may think they're nothing like me, they might do shit like kill themselves out of guilt for taking a photo of a starving kid and a vulture just to prove that they're not distant, but it doesn't change the fact that they get it.
A few years back I was in a movie theatre watching some piece of shit about a boat sinking and some kids who liked to paint each other naked or something. And this little old lady said to her husband as we all left the theatre 'It's sad all those people died, but didn't it make a lovely film?' and I wanted to kiss the shrivelled old bat because that's my whole fucking point. Your blood is just oil on the wheels of my art, folks.
I chose a side in heaven when the war began. My fucking side, the art side, which is more than just good or evil. It wasn't cowardice.
If I keep telling myself this shit, I'm sure I'll eventually believe it. I'm pretty persuasive, after all.
- Muse
Faith never kisses them, never even touches them. But she has to get off somehow and she can't seem to do that for herself.
She never really could before, either, and that's what the boys were for, with their bodies for fucking and their minds for fucking and their hearts for eating. Nighttime toys and it was thinking of the look on their faces in the morning that made her come.
Now it's even harder, with the women and the fluorescent lights. The women are afraid of her, but they don't want her, they don't need her. She doesn't know their minds and they have no hearts to eat.
- 5x500
...Hyde said, sitting down behind the minister, who was staring at Kelso as though he had horns. "What's the problem, man?"
Kelso smiled. "No problem, man!" he said. "Father Bob here is just having a hard time accepting my vows to Fez."
"Quoting Ben Affleck's gay wedding speech is not a vow, Michael!" Fez snapped, smacking him on the shoulder.
"But it's beautiful, man," Kelso said, looking down at a pad of paper. "Your love has opened up so many parts of my heart that I did not know existed...especially the queer parts. There are so many things that you are wicked good at..."
"Oh, you lovable galoot," said Fez, shaking his head. "But no. Those vows are for Ben and Matt and their pure, true love alone. Good day to them!"
"But Fez..." Kelso said, looking up at his groom-to-be with beseeching, pretty eyes.
"I said good day!" Fez said. "Now kiss me, you beautiful thing, and let's try again."
- Thirteen Conversations About Teh Gay, by Jennifer-Oksana
Angel drunk? I must brood now. No, I'm plastered, so instead I'll do the Macarena. But I'm still Angel. So I must brood. Macarena. Brood. Macarena. Wait, is that a Ricky Martin song?
- Chocolatey Goodness, by the Mad Poetess
You killed a spider-plant, Xander. Do you know how hard it is to kill a spider-plant? Yes, Willow. I fought very hard, and at last succeeded. It died a valiant death.
- Chocolatey Goodness, by the Mad Poetess
"It hurts him, though. My boy doesn't like to be hurt, not really. Not like me." Drusilla spoke softly, her eyes clouded as she watched Spike whisper something unintelligible under his breath. "He likes to play games, and he likes to be punished, sometimes, but it's not the same." Her voice turned conspiratorial for a moment. "It's because of Daddy. The King of Clubs made the princess, you see, but her knight was made by the King of Hearts, who fed him chocolate toffees and spanked him when he was good."
- Chocolatey Goodness, by the Mad Poetess
There was quite a simple explanation for everything, Harry decided. The dream, the- whatever that was, in the shower.
He had gone insane.
Which was sad, really, because the sanity had served him quite well over the years. But there really wasn't any other explanation for what had happened. He'd closed his eyes, and then he wasn't in control anymore. Some evil force had taken over his mind, like a voice in his head, only with pictures and a taste for the obscene. Harry found that comforting. At least it wasn't his fault.
- Take It and Like It, by Sara
Quietly they bleed into each other, moonlight broken into a thousand shards. Touching and tasting, skin pressed against skin.
He holds these memories to himself: her dead eyes, her dark kiss.
Wishing he dared to take more of her in.
- Quiet as She Bleeds, by Spyke
You say, "Well, try. I'll wait," and you don't know you mean it. You mean forever before you're old enough to understand what that means, and by then it's too late.
- Esperanza, by Silvia Kundera
You've seen her caged and you don't like it. Boxes and boys, they keep working to fold her up and away.
- Esperanza, by Silvia Kundera
Because he was never the right hand of Death, no matter what the Watchers might say now. Angelus and Death never had much in common. Death doesn't do what He does for the power-trip or the artistic finesse. No, it's all about setting up the toy soldiers and watching them fall. Death is chaos and devil-may-care, Death is the Butterfly Effect: a butterfly flaps its wings in Peking and suddenly California gets a tidal wave instead of the predicted sunny skies and a hundred people drown and Death sits back, eternal child that he is, and claps his hands in glee. Death smirks and smokes and laughs and tastes like the smoothest whiskey, and that's Spike. Angelus went into churches to destroy the innocent; Spike went into them to see if he could outsmart the priests, armed with their holy water and crucifixes, and emerge victorious. Because it was *fun.* The Grim Reaper has bright blue eyes and looks good in leather; the Grim Reaper makes sure that you want to fuck him before you go.
- Blood Loss, by Jess
You say, one day, "Did you know I've always loved your hands?" and the boy looks at you like you're crazy, and you want to explain about how you're a hero and this is first of your last stanzas of song, where you lay waste to a kingdom for a beautiful woman - except you don't like women too much, so it will have to be a man.
- Legend, by Silvia Kundera
Being with him tore me up, but it was like breathing after being choked, and it was the best thing in my life. Ever.
- A Long Time, by the Mad Poetess
Eeyore could not come, and that was Too Bad, because he was a gloomy old thing, and could have used some cheering up. But the nice Man In A White Coat had said that he simply could not go out alone while he was under a Suicide Watch.
- Teddybear's Picnic, by Scribe
"Why do you do this to me?"
"Because it gets you off," Draco said, lifting his arms so Harry could remove his shirt. He gasped as Harry bent down, licking roughly at his nipple. "And me, also. It's like this vicious, wonderful cycle."
- Darken Many Virtues, by Sara
It’s not the sweeping, dewy-eyed love of romance novels and bad TV movies; we are too much ourselves for that. There are still mornings when I wake up surprised to see him there, and I know that he has just as many flashes of panic that the whole thing is going to fall down around us as I do. We’ve seen too much to want the fairy tale ending. We would probably fight over who gets to be the prince and who the horse, and to be honest we know that most fairy tales end in someone getting something cut off with medieval weaponry and hey, been there, wearin' the eye-patch.
Sometimes I imagine some bored god flipping us like coins. Heads for hate, tails for love, and a part of me will always be waiting for the next flip. But until then I’m here and its not just for the company. It is big heart slamming, I can’t get enough of him, ticking bomb clock love. I love him more than I could ever have dreamt of hating him and I know by every glance that he feels the same.
He’s still Spike, though; the sacrificial goat act didn’t change him where it matters. He’s no angel, which considering the thudding punnage is a good thing. There are differences. Yeah, sometimes it’s like living with a cross between a Ritalin deprived toddler and Buddha and, okay I love him, but he is far from perfect. He can be murderously annoying, he hogs the covers and picks his teeth with left over animal bones, he constantly messes with the radio, and for all his I’m-so-cool-now-that-I-have-become-some-weird-vamp-resurrected-fire-element-guy he giggled like a kid for a day after we saw some giraffes mating. He dips Twinkies in blood and knows all the words to Bohemian Rhapsody. He refuses to wear anything other than that sarong and true, he looks strange in anything else these days, but it doesn’t help me not look like a white slaver when I’m trying to get a young girl papers out of the country. He found some weird herb and threw it on the fire in Morocco and I still have very disjointed memories of dancing girls, a basket of chickens and a gong. He sneers at my language attempts, curses every time I touch a map and laughs at my various beard experiments. If we have a fight he has the crazy-making habit of disappearing just as I have the perfect put down, and God, I can’t tell you about the sulking…but he makes me laugh every single day and he looks at me like I’m the only person he can see or wants to. He makes me happy and with him I know I’m loved for me, I don’t have to change or achieve, he will go with me no matter what way I step.
- Dictaphonic Rambling, by littleflame
All Brad wants is a nice cold beer after a real hard day. There was a time when he enjoyed law and didn't get the headaches -- when he went home excited and went to bed happy, not worn out and half-dreading the morning to come. It doesn't mean he's lost the spark. He's just gotten older. This sort of disillusionment is to be expected with age. Besides, you hear Denny Crane enough times in one day and you start to wonder if you haven't maybe gone insane.
- Manful
There is a long, silent pause. Brad wants to be dead. It's like that dream you have, where you're naked in front of all your classmates in the eighth grade. The meanest grade of all.
- Manful
...because, when you get down to it, he's always been a fool for love.
It was love for Buffy that made him go to Angel and shame him into going into the Master's lair after her; love for her, and for the Scoobies and Giles, and even his family and his stupid little town, that made him keep going into the lairs of other villains, patrol the cemeteries and back alleys and beaches of Sunnydale with the Junior Justice League. Once Cordelia had gone to Los Angeles, Xander had been the only average human amongst the Slayer-Watcher-Witch-Demon crowd. Poor old Riley couldn't stand being average, and Xander could bet anything that Riley was shooting his way through Cadmeon's Demonlogy in an effort to make himself feel super-human.
Wasn't how it works, Xander could have told him. You do it for love of your gang, your guys, your Band of Brothers---or, sisters as in Xander's case. Not because you want to tell yourself that your individuality and your specialness is what made you leave Iowa. You shove stakes in your waistband and holy water bottles in your pockets and go forth and fight evil, not for the fame and fortune or even your mother's smiles, but because of the smell of crayons in your hot hand, the way you felt when you made a whole class and teacher laugh at your joke, because your mom had once bought you a guitar you couldn't play, because you had never ever felt six feet tall and bullet-proof, but because your friends couldn't save the world without you and there was something about Buffy's wide, wide smile that told you that.
You do it for love of that world, of even the asshole undeads, of even the loud bickering parents and the drunken uncles, of the ex- girlfriends who came back to your side, of the nice lady at the Espresso Pump who always gave you refills, of the classmates who you mourned and had to dust. The little girls who squared their jaws and picked up stakes, and followed you and your friends into a hellmouth, when they could have turned and run.
- A Free Man in Rome
She was pretty. Maybe pretty like poisonous flowers and vampire women were pretty, but Xander had Lilah and his plan-free brain between himself and zombification, so he was going to bet on the brunette with the naughty sparkle in her eyes.
"What do we do?" Xander asked.
"First, we have lots of noisy sex," Lilah said, unbuttoning her blouse nonchalantly. "Nothing gods and demons -- and hey, everyone else -- love more than kinky undead-living sex. Then we do what I should have done before walking into the Redding Chainsaw Massacre."
- Lilah and Xander vs. The Zombie Gods of Redding
"...Rest assured nothing as syrupy as Love is going to stop me."
Xander growled in rage before answering.
"There are some cosmic truths a comic geek and amateur houngan like me understands that you never will. Maybe you should have tried to fit some time in your busy zombie-queen schedule to read some Neil Gaiman back when you were alive, Dominga. 'Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain.'"
Tears of fury were now running down Xander's face and his eye was blacker than it had ever been, burning with pure passionate hatred. With each cutting word his hoarse voice became more vicious.
"You think Love belongs solely in the light? You think it's all just sweetness and roses? You've been watching too many Valentine's day commercials. Love is raw and it hurts and it kills you a day at a time. Love is fury so blind a witch will rip out a man's skin and set him on fire. It's watching the only man who ever saw you as more than just another fuck-up die in front of you and being able to do -nothing-, not even cry or scream because if you did, you're not sure you'd ever stop. You think you dedicating this place to darkness will keep Love out, you stupid dead hag? Watch and learn!"
Xander threw his head back with a mad cruel smile and roared.
"ERZULIE-ZILA! ZIEUROUGE! HEAR ME CRUEL MOTHER OF VENGEANCE! HEAR ME DESOLATE QUEEN OF SHATTERED HEARTS! YOUR WICKED LOVING CHILD CALLS UPON YOU, DEVOURING MOTHER!"
Dominga hissed at hearing the much-feared name and then smiled nastily.
"How dramatic. Unfortunately for you, the red loas will not answer without a sacrifice of human blood, you idiot. Who are you willing to kill to call ..."
Dominga's words died on Belinda's lips, watching in shock.
As Xander slit his own throat with his knife, his eye burned crimson and he never stopped smiling.
- Joli Coeur, by Caramel Covered Carioca
Their MALP wasn't a MALP so much as it was a little UAV, built for flight in and out of atmosphere and with an anti-gravity component as secret sauce. Rodney had cobbled together the anti-gravity and propulsion thing from the remains of a discarded child's toy (also, he'd whooped like an idiot and done a strangely compelling little dance when he'd figured out exactly what it was he'd found in the junk pile), and John had built the body of the not-quite-plane from what he was convinced had once been a toaster. Their MALP didn't really have wings as such, just a few short fins to help keep it stable in atmosphere, but it was shaped a bit like a bicycle helmet and about the size of a Labrador. The little electric grappler that Rodney had attached to the back ("So teams can retrieve it with a Puddlejumper, even when it's in space; it'll snare the Jumper's hull like a magnet and hitch a ride home!") had taken on all the appearance of a tail, and made the robot look a bit like a family pet.
John loved it, and had secretly named it "The Flying Toaster of Doom," but he hadn't told Rodney that yet. He was planning to give it a custom paint job while Rodney wasn't looking.
- Such Is the Way to the Stars
"None of you are supposed to be in here! This door was shut! Why are you down here anyway? Where are your parents?"
It has to be, of course, the tiniest and most elfin-faced child who speaks up. Doe eyes unblinking, a squeaky voice announces, solemnly, "My parents are dead. The Wraith took them."
Oh, God. McKay shuts his eyes, feeling the guilt rising like a blush. A pity for the kids, really, because they're just too young to resist that stricken look on his face. A second voice says, "Ooh - and mine!" and a third "Mine too. And my sister." "And my uncle!" "And my - stoat..."
McKay opens his eyes. Two of the kids are furiously poking a third, presumably the one who thought it was smart playing the stoat sympathy card.
- unknown
"Wonderful. My choice of Vivaldi or Brazilian techno, and if I do not listen to music while I work than I have to listen to Gorsen's muttering. Talk, talk, talk while he works."
"I'd share my music, except, wait, you wiped all my mp3s off my laptop," Rodney said.
Zelenka looked exasperated. "Yes, I am most terribly sorry. If we had had to flee the Wraith, I am sure we would have been consoled in our exile by collected works of They Might Be Giants." He held up one hand in the air and said, "Remnants of Ancient database." He held up the other hand as if weighing scales. "Particle Man. Such a dilemma it was."
- unknown
The problem with teaching someone with a deeply vindictive personality Occlumency was the inevitable problem of his using it to evil ends.
Combining the fact that Snape had a deep and dreadful loathing of the Marauders, James' recent revelation that he was a jolly homophobe and Sirius' recent revelation that he was mad over Remus (made simultaneously by Peter, who was then thoroughly thumped by all involved), nothing good could have possibly come of it.
The fact that Snape had a very deep, dark, secretive penchant for reading terrible Wizarding romance novels did nothing to improve the situation.
- Cliche #5, by Pru
Remus batted his lashes at him, and murmured, "Oh, James, I'm sorry. I should have known you'd want to be the aggressor." He flung himself dramatically across James' bed, throwing one white forearm across his face in exaggerated meekness, and somehow blushed on cue, saying in a tremulous voice, "Do what you will with me."
Peter whimpered from across the room. "Oh, James. Sirius is going to kill you so much."
- Cliche #5, by Pru
One reason Rodney's attention was worth something was because it was rare. Rodney gave attention to problems, and to devices, and to food and coffee, and to worst-case scenarios. People, not so much. He made you earn it.
Which made the rare occasions when he said, "Hey, that might work," really rewarding.
John wasn't going to think about the even rarer occasions when Rodney said, "Yes, yes, exactly," because sometimes he heard that in the shower while he jerked off, and so it had come to have a Pavlovian effect.
- unknown
"You could leave me. Or die tomorrow. I don't know how I could go back to the way things were before. Maybe I couldn't. That should scare the shit out of me."
"I'm not going to die tomorrow."
"You can't promise that."
John shifted under him, sighing. "No, I can't. I can't promise. But, really, it's not likely, is it? I'm not sick. You'd know. One of the fringe benefits of being a guide; cancer or high blood pressure or something can't sneak up on you."
"Freak accident," Rodney said. "A meteor could drop on you tomorrow. Squish."
"Right? And who will be standing right next to me when it hits? If I die tomorrow in a freak accident, one in a million chance, lightening strike, who could have guessed--you will probably not have to worry about outliving me, Rodney. To be really blunt."
Rodney laughed despite himself. But part of what he was laughing at was his own profound and unexpected betrayal. "Oh, my god. I can't protect myself from you at all. I trust you. I'd let you do anything. I don't even mind the meteor idea. I've lost my mind."
- Imperfections: John and Rodney
These days, the rumours speak of Jack out-waiting Old Roger himself, and Jack thinks it's all bloody marvelous. The rum will loosen the lad's tongue, and Jack will get his prize before the night is out, or his name isn't Captain Jack Sparrow. (Strictly speaking, it isn't, but Jack fully intends for his given name to be lost in the annals of time, if by 'lost' one means 'all traces erased and utterly destroyed, never ever to be seen again by eyes human or otherwise, and perhaps stomped on with a sturdy boot for good measure.')
- Hurricane Jack
“I want to know why zombies,” said Jon. “I mean. Does this kind of thing just happen? The bus wanders off into the darkness and then zombies eat us? I feel like I would have seen that on the news.”
“Unless it just happened,” said Spencer. “Maybe this is the start of the zombie apocalypse.”
“Or maybe,” Brendon moaned, “this is the end, and we’re the last living people on earth.”
“No, Pete would have called,” Ryan reassured him.
“Or texted,” said Spencer. “’SRY G2G, ZMBIE 8 PATRICK.’ Something.”
- It's almost Halloween
"Lex Luthor?" said a disbelieving voice. Lex looked into the lens of an iconograph.
"If you set that thing on me, Otto, I will have your guts for garters," said Lex.
Otto lowered the iconograph hastily.
"Zat hasn't been done since your grandfather's day," he said.
"Well, I don't look anything like him," said Lex. "So I must have taken after him in some other way."
He smiled, his fangs glinting.
- Disclexia; or, Clex-in-Discworld
It might have been the most important kiss of his life: happening now, this moment, his head was changing, he needed this kiss, he liked men, he loved his mouth on Spike and Spike's mouth on his, and he understood that everything in him could surrender, the heart of darkness softening, and he might die, like crucifixion, but not with dishonesty or cruelty or hate. He'd die of love. He was okay with that.
When Xander's lungs were fuller than they'd ever been--he wanted to breathe and make a sailboat glide--Spike licked himself loose. He seemed rightfully smug, but as Xander gazed into his eyes and smiled happily, his face shifted a moment to wonderment, as if something unexpected had happened.
- Your Horoscope For Today
The look of solid, protective determination that flashes across Fairchild's face lets Bruno know that this will never happen, that Fairchild will fight and fight viciously. It's not acceptance or even empathy, but it's a visceral sort of affection, and so much of Bruno's life has hinged upon that instinctive desire to love that stirs in every heart--in his mother's, his father's, his little sister's as she smoothed his hair and figured him out. There have always been shipwrecks and rocky shoals, and the blind, voracious desire to love the people you love has saved him every time, floated him toward safety.
- On the Road
He wants to say something about how he's in love with Boots, and what makes Boots happy will ultimately make Bruno happy, even if he finds it at the bottom of a bottle six years later--even then, it's acceptable joy.
- On the Road